A look back at Monmouthpedia

The dust has now settled over the launch of Monmouthpedia on Saturday, when Monmouth was officially launched as the world’s first Wikipedia town (news passim).

Monmouth, an historic town close to the border between England and Wales, is now sell covered in QR codes, enabling visitors with smart phones (e.g. Android, Jesusphone) to scan them and access pertinent information in their own language (if available) from Wikipedia.

The ceramic plaque with QR code pointing to Wikipedia's entry on the River Monnow. Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

In the morning, volunteers from Wikipedia organised an editing workshop in the library, ably assisted by library staff. It was most encouraging to find new enthusiastic editors coming forward to help add to all the hundreds of articles that have already been created and/or improved.

After lunch there was the official signing of the agreement between Monmouthshire County Council and Wikimedia UK, the charitable body that promotes Wikipedia and other wiki projects in the UK, in Monmouth’s historic Shire Hall.

The signing party. Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

News of Monmouth’s achievement also travelled right round the world and back again. At the time of writing media coverage has included 212 stories appearing in 33 separate countries. Had this coverage been paid for, it has an advertising value equivalent spend of £2.12m. Before we leave media coverage, it’s worth noting that Fox News has demoted Monmouth (population approx. 9,000) to a village. You can’t win ’em all! 🙂

Before leaving Wales, it’s only fair to give a wee plug to Wicipedia Cymraeg, which now has over 36,000 Welsh language articles and a respectable 2.5 million visitors per month.